


burn

by bigspoonnoya



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 23:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12398271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigspoonnoya/pseuds/bigspoonnoya
Summary: Summer is always too hot.(Kageyama gets sunburned.)





	burn

**Author's Note:**

> i did this a few months ago for the kagehina seasons zine, so if you picked that up, it might be familiar to you. it's short but sweet.

Summer is always too hot. Kageyama can’t remember a time when he didn’t think of summer as something that sits on your skin, pressing its warmth into every nook of your body, like it would throttle you if it could. You have to fight it, the summer—it wants to get you to stop running, to stop pushing, to stop working. 

He’d never lost to it, of course; if you couldn’t beat a hot day, how were you supposed to beat anyone at volleyball? The summer can’t even serve.

Kageyama was a winter baby, so maybe he stays at war with summer for that reason. It’s not his habitat. He doesn’t thrive.

“How come you aren’t burned?”

Hinata’s skin gets more freckled in the summer. Kageyama first noticed that—what, was it second year? The spring came and they started to run outside more, under the sun, and the freckles sprouted across Hinata’s nose. He’s fair, so they’re light freckles, and not a whole lot, but—enough. When he frowns at Kageyama, his nose wrinkles, the freckles crumple together. “I put on sunblock. Hold on, I’ll get the aloe…”

Hinata goes rummaging through a drawer near his bed, leaving Kageyama to stand, awkward, waiting. It’s been at least a year since Kageyama was last in Hinata’s room, but it hasn’t changed at all. There are a few new photos pinned above Hinata’s desk—he’s been living at home his first year of university, so these must be new friends and classmates—but the air throughout the house smells of baking and baby wipes just like Kageyama remembers.

Hinata pulls a bottle of some weird gel from his drawer. He turns back to Kageyama. “Wow. You’re  _ really _ red.”

“Shut up!” Kageyama plops to the floor and starts pulling off his t-shirt—he can already feel the sunburn sting when the cloth scrapes across it, and they only left the park half an hour ago. So much for,  _ I don’t need sunblock, I tan _ , which was what he’d insisted when they gathered for a pick-up game on a public court that morning. They met up with a bunch of the old team from Karasuno: Yamaguchi had dragged Tsukishima along; Tanaka and Nishinoya and Azumane showed, and Narita and Ennoshita too. It was a nice time, except that Kageyama came out of it looking like a lobster.

Hinata tosses Kageyama the bottle, and he squints at the label. “What is this stuff, anyway?”

“It’s aloe vera gel! You use it on burns and stuff. It’ll make it turn to tan, so it doesn’t get all peely.”

Kageyama pops open the cap and sniffs. Doesn’t smell like much of anything. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you’d kept your shirt on,” Hinata tells him knowingly, picking at his finger while Kageyama squirts a huge dollop of aloe into his hands and slathers it down his arms and the front of his torso.

“It’s hot out.”

“It’s always hot out, it’s  _ summer _ .” Hinata reaches up and flicks the switch on the fan at the foot of his bed. The breeze is weak, but better than nothing. 

Though his sunburn has yet to start aching, the aloe already feels good, cool against the warm air. “I need you to get my back.” 

Hinata makes a face, but obliges, crawling around behind Kageyama and rubbing aloe into his palms. Hinata’s hands are smaller than Kageyama’s—Kageyama knew that, but it’s strange to  _ feel _ it, as they move across the curves of his back. A contented sigh, edging on a groan, escapes him. Hinata works quickly, and it’s disappointing when he scrambles back around to where Kageyama can see him. 

“I think maybe you did get kind of burned on your cheeks,” Kageyama observes, but Hinata is hiding his face behind his hands, so it’s hard to say. 

“I didn’t!”

“You look red.”

“I’m not!”

“Then why are your cheeks all pink?”

“They’re not!”

“They are—what, do you think I’m blind?”

Hinata glares at him so hard Kageyama’s only viable reaction is to glare back. Which leaves them glaring at each other in silence.

That is, until Hinata shouts, “I’m  _ blushing _ , you baka!”

“Blushing?” Kageyama sits back. Ah, okay. He can kind of see it now. “Why’re you blushing?”

“Because you made me put stuff all over your back—”

“ _ Made _ you?” 

“Yeah!”

“You were the one who said I had to come over and get this—this stupid gel thing—I didn’t even need—”

“You look like a tomato, Kageyama-kun!”

_ This isn’t fair, him getting all mad at me for taking the help he insisted on giving _ . “You know what.” Kageyama gets to his feet, grabbing his t-shirt from the floor. “I don’t care. I’m going.”

He starts for the door, but glances back at Hinata, who’s shrunk even smaller somehow, his knees to his chest, peeking up at Kageyama with the weirdest look on his face. They’ve both grown in four years, physically and mentally, but here he catches a glimpse of that scrappy twitchy kid he met in the hallway outside a gymnasium in middle school. Kageyama doesn’t know why, but the memory makes him hesitate. 

It goes quiet again for a second. The fan above Hinata’s bed hiccups and stutters. 

Hinata speaks quietly, without looking up from his knees. “I’ve never actually touched you that much. Like, not fighting… And you made a funny noise.”

“Because it felt good! I have sunburn!”

Hinata’s blush deepens. What the hell. Perturbed, Kageyama takes a step toward him, and he just—shrinks more!

“What’s the matter with you?” Kageyama demands.

“What’s the matter with  _ you _ , why are you always so  _ angry _ , maybe that’s why people don’t tell you anything!”

“What?” Hinata makes less sense the more he talks and it’s infuriating. Kageyama knows his face is doing something nasty. “People don’t tell me—what are people not telling me?”

Hinata just stares at him over the top of his knees, his eyes like saucers.

“Screw this,” says Kageyama under his breath, and for the second time today, he makes to stomp out.

“Did you miss me?”

Kageyama stops short. He turns back slightly, to see that Hinata has raised his head. He meets Kageyama’s eye with his chin held high and his lower lip quivering. There’s an odd flutter in Kageyama’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

“When you were away at school and we didn’t see each other at all. Did you miss me?”

“Miss you,” Kageyama echoes. He keeps grappling to attach a feeling he recognizes to that phrase.

Losing patience, Hinata rolls his eyes, and drops his knees to sit cross-legged. “Like, did you ever think, ‘I wish Hinata was here!’ or something.”

That clicks in Kageyama’s mind. “Oh—yeah, of course.” Hinata annoys him, gets on his nerves, but over the years he’s become one of the people Kageyama feels most comfortable around. Easy to talk to, quick to laugh, hilariously embarrassing. They argue, but that’s fun too, sometimes.

Hinata’s mouth falls open at the ease of Kageyama’s reply. “Oh.”  

Kageyama steps away from the door, meandering back to where he’d sat before, falling to his knees. His sunburn has finally started to hurt, so he needs to pop an aspirin sooner rather later. But he’s preoccupied with the expression on Hinata’s face. “Why are you asking?”

“Because—” Hinata swallows. He blinks rapidly. “I wanted to know. Because I missed you.” The blush has returned to his cheeks, beneath the summer freckles. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmph,” grunts Kageyama, not knowing what else to say. The heat from his own skin makes him dizzy, perhaps aided by the fluttering in his stomach, which has only worsened. He finds himself staring at Hinata intensely, though he isn’t thinking anything in particular.

Hinata clears his throat and grabs for the aloe. “You didn’t put any on your face. You gotta do that. Peeling on your face is the worst.” He takes a small amount of the gel and reaches for Kageyama’s nose, depositing there and carefully spreading it to his cheeks, then his forehead, then his chin. 

Kageyama’s eyes flutter close—like the touches on his back, it feels good. He pries them open when he senses Hinata is almost done, just in time to see him lean in to kiss Kageyama’s cheek.

“Just like taking care of Natsu,” Hinata says, redder than ever and with a quiet nervous laugh, like he really thinks he can play that off as a joke. And he calls Kageyama stupid.

“That kind of hurt,” Kageyama manages, through a haze of pain and the sound of sirens going off in the back of his head. He bends forward, toward Hinata’s face, which opens in amazement. “Can you get sunburn on your lips?”

(You can, it turns out. But— _ worth it _ .)

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading  
> x


End file.
